Trump got some things right in his State of the Union address, thanks to Kim Kardashian West

There are some laws Trump brought in last year which he should be applauded for, however uncomfortable you might feel about it

During a State of the Union in which Donald Trump at one point seemed to take personal credit for inspiring the record number of women now in Congress, most of whom ran in direct opposition to him, there was one woman whose tireless campaigning and pursuit of social justice played a pivotal role yet went unmentioned. When this speech is written up in the history books, they shouldn’t forget the name Kim Kardashian West.

In May last year, Kardashian met with Trump and Jared Kushner in the Oval Office to lobby generally for prison reform, and specifically to call for the release of Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old woman who was given a life sentence in 1996 for her involvement in a cocaine trafficking organisation in Memphis.

Trump agreed to commute Johnson’s sentence, and today he invited her as one of his many stunt guests. Seated next to the looming Kushner, who always looks as if he’s caught in the midst of A Series of Unfortunate Events, Johnson wiped away tears as Trump said: “When I saw Alice's beautiful family greet her at the prison gates, hugging and kissing and crying and laughing, I knew I did something right. Alice is with us tonight, and she is a terrific woman.”

The moment drew a rare moment of genuine unity, and a standing ovation for Johnson from both sides of the political aisle.

It’s hard to give any credit to a president whose administration recently admitted they have no way of reuniting immigrant children with the parents they snatched them from, but in this case, credit where it’s due, Trump really did do something right for once. Commuting Johnson’s sentence was an admirable thing to do, and he was also right to say that “sentencing laws… have wrongly and disproportionately harmed the African American community.” You really can tell when he’s sticking to the script - that’s not the sort of line you’ll ever hear him ad lib at one of his base-pleasing, MAGA-cap-waving rallies.

After Johnson’s moment, he went on to introduce Matthew Charles, another nonviolent drug convict, who recently became the first prisoner released under the FIRST STEP Act (which stands for the Formerly Incarcerated Reenter Society Transformed Safely Transitioning Every Person Act - even that acronym is a hard-working member of society).

Again this act, which Trump signed into law on 21 December last year, is something he should be applauded for, however reluctant you feel about that. That’s especially true when you consider that in the past Trump has talked about executing drug dealers, and even this time last year at the State of the Union he was giving it his hardman act and arguing that the country should be “much tougher on drug dealers and pushers”.

Of course, there’s still a long way to go. At the moment FIRST STEP only addresses prison reform, not sentencing reform. Some of the bipartisan lawmakers who helped shape Congress’s criminal justice bill, including Democrat Hakeem Jeffries and Republican Doug Collins, have already begun to talk about a second package which would look to go further and reform sentencing this year.

A related area where the law is a mess is around marijuana legalisation. Trump steered well clear of addressing federal legalisation in this speech, but with New York set to be the latest state to legalise recreational use this year, nationwide legalisation is beginning to look like a forgone conclusion, and with it the call to commute the sentences of many more people currently serving time for nonviolent marijuana-related offences.

In total, there are currently around 456,000 people in American prisons serving time for nonviolent drug-related offences, including simple possession. As Trump uncharacteristically but correctly pointed out, sentencing has always disproportionately affected African Americans and other minority groups, a problem which has acknowledged at all levels of government. Last year, California State Senator Ben Allen told me this was one of the reasons he had supported marijuana legalisation in the state. “I felt that our previous policies were so backward, and of course the brunt of those policies fell very severely on communities of colour and lower income communities,” he said. “There was a lot of differential policing in this area.”

Sadly, it’s doubtful even the awesome star power of Kim Kardashian West can lobby individually for each of those 456,000 who remain behind bars. It says something about how craven and limelight-obsessed Trump is that all it took was her powers of persuasion to secure Johnson’s release, though actual policy reform would be a victory for all of them. Let’s hope it really does come to that.

In his speech, Trump said that Johnson’s story reminds us that “we always have the power to shape our own destiny,” but that’s not quite true. If you ever find yourself in prison in Trump’s America, your best hope is still having a celebrity on your side.